No Time to Explain!
by Chainsaw114
Summary: In depression, Rick has decided live by himself in his parent's cabin in the woods. However, a brief encounter with his future self has him blasting his way across different realities. A narrative of the indie game "No Time to Explain", where you play as a man who travels through time with a laser cannon that doubles as a jetpack.


No Time to Explain

As dawn crept in through the windows Rick let out a moan. He pulled the covers over his head and wished the sun had never come up, wished to return to the peaceful, dreamless sleep in which he had been moments before. He could still see the light poking in through the sheets, and still hear the birds chirping from outside. He couldn't get back to sleep, and with a groan through open the covers and walked over to the bathroom. He looked himself over in the mirror, his brown hair had bedhead, and bags under his eyes poked out slightly on his light skin. He showered, brushed his teeth, combed his hair, put on a clean green t-shirt, a pair of black pants, and his black sneakers before going into the kitchen to make himself a breakfast sandwich.

In the waking hours he couldn't help but remember his life before he moved into his parent's vacation cabin in the woods. Even here, nearly isolated from the rest of the world he couldn't stop thinking about Delilah, and how she cheated on him. He would remember the days where he would simply not come to work, which were so many days he ended up getting fired.

Had it really already been 4 months since he found his girlfriend, the love of his life, cheating on him? Had it really been 3 months since the depression caused him to lose his job? Had it really been this soon that his life had just gone down the drain? Why did she cheat on him anyway? Was it because he was too nerdy? Did he not spend enough time with her? Did he need to impress her more? What could he have done to keep her with him? How did he not notice that their relationship was losing its spark? He didn't understand, and every time he racked his brain over what happened it only made him feel worse.

The telephone on the kitchen table began to ring. Rick hesitated in picking it up. It was probably his parents, and he didn't want to talk to them. He didn't want to talk to anybody, and he most certainly didn't want to go back into the world. He didn't want another job, didn't want to do anything. He had told them he wanted to be there because he needed time alone, so why were they bothering him now? Rick wouldn't have minded staying in his parent's cabin, which now felt like his, forever. He had food, water, TV, and everything he needed to survive. If he ever needed more, he could take the 10 mile journey out of the woods to grocery store in town. There was still plenty of money left over in his bank account. Rick felt that life would be perfect just staying as he is.

The answering machine picked up, and Rick turned on the T.V. to drown out the message left by his parents, though he couldn't help but hear some of the words. "Get a job" his father said in his gruff voice "you lazy bum." Then his mother came on, her voice softer with a more empathetic tone "Please come home. Maybe if you find another girl you can forget about what happened with Delilah." Rick didn't listen to them. Instead he felt like dancing, so he booted up the gaming system and plugged the motion sensor, putting in the dancing game he always enjoyed. As the character on screen danced about Rick did the same, copying its movements. He shook his hips, gyrating and thrusting it too and fro. Why did his parents want him back so badly anyway? At least here he wasn't bothering them with anything, or have to listen to them complain about him moping around.

Then the TV. began to get fuzzy, with white bands of static sliding up and down the screen. Rick stopped shaking his hips and was about to walk over to smack the TV. when he noticed the lights in the house flashing on and off. They glowed noticeably brighter than normal, even with the sun shining in through the windows. From back in the bedroom he could hear the radio blaring, static mixed with voices that changed pitch between high and low, man and woman. Rick felt a tingling sensation in his skin, and felt the hairs on his neck stand on end. He stood, frozen in front of the TV, unsure of what to do.

He then heard a low humming noise coming from outside. It sounded like an airplane engine as it began to start and spin. On one of the solid, windowless sides of the house cracks began to appear on the wall, smoking pieces of it sliding and falling out as though they were pushed and burned. The cracks soon spread out into a circular shape, and a white light poured in through the empty spaces. As the wall continued to break down, the white light grew brighter and brighter until the wall exploded.

The blast blew hot air across Rick's face, and he held up his hands to shield himself from the small clumps of debris that singed his skin and rained down on him and all over the living room. The white light behind the wall was gone, and through the hole, and over the smoking rubble stepped a man with thick silver sunglasses. His clothes were exactly the same as Rick's, though the man's shirt was red as opposed to the green one Rick had on. He was well-built, his muscles more well-toned than Rick's, and his biceps and pectorals outlined within his shirt. His hair was a short crew cut.

The man's head turned side to side, surveying the area. The grey gun he held to his waist looked like nothing more than a large brick with smoke drifting out of one open end. On the side of the brick were two bars, one red and one blue, that lit up digitally. The man turned toward Rick, and took off his glasses to reveal that he had the same face as him. To Rick it was like looking into his reflection, albeit a more fit, more attractive version. As the man took off his silver sunglasses he spoke in a voice that was exactly like Rick's, only slightly deeper and a bit more baritone.

"I am you from the future. There's no time to explain. Come with me if you want to live!"

"What?"

"What are you waiting for? Come on, we have to move, now!"

The man turned and started jogging back into the woods. Rick stayed where he was, watching him go. The more Rick tried to understand what was going on at the moment the less sense it all seemed to make. The whole situation seemed like a joke or a prank. Not only had the man come in like the hero from some action movie, but everything he said was a cliché. The man must be some camper from out in the woods who happened to be really good at making fake rubber faces. There must be some teenager from out in the woods behind the guy, laughing at the face of surprise and confusion Rick was definitely having. It hadn't quite registered yet that one of the walls to his parent's cabin was now blasted open.

Right after the man began jogging he stopped, his knees bent low, his hand near his ear.

"Oh no." he said, turning back to Rick. "Do you hear that?"

Rick could hear a faint booming sound, a series of loud bangs became loud and louder each moment. Suddenly the man in the red shirt began to sprint back into the house. The gun hanging off the strap to his back, the man grabbed Rick by the shirt and led him to the corner of the house, both of them crouching underneath the window.

"What the hell is going on?" Rick whispered, without really knowing why "What's making that noise? Who are you?"

"Ssshhhh. Get down."

The booming noise was getting closer and closer. Soon it felt like it whatever was making that noise was right next to them on the other side of the wall. Whatever was making the noise was massive, as Rick could feel the ground shake beneath him. The booming noises stopped, yet Rick and the red shirted man kept perfectly still, neither of them so much as taking a breath.

Rick realized their hiding spot didn't make any sense. If the thing outside was tall, wouldn't it just look down through the window and be able to see them? He didn't voice this thought though, as seeing the red shirted man's anxiety towards it made him feel rather scared himself. The booming noise started again, quick and rhythmic. It grew softer and softer, and when the red shirted man looked up through the window he breathed a sigh of relief and said "it's gone." Rick looked through the window too before bombarding the man with questions.

"What were we hiding from? Why was it after us? Where did it come from? Why was it here? Why does your gun look like it's just a pipe?

The man shook his head. "Look, all I can say is, have you seen the movie Back to The Future? Wait, of course you have. Well you know how you're not supposed to interact with your past self at all or else you'll create time paradoxes? Do you also know how every decision we make has an alternate timeline where we choose the opposite? Well, one of me, you, or whoever chose to interact with his past self, and now all the timelines are going out of whack. They're all combining together at once."

"What? Wouldn't that make you a culprit too? You're the one who went back to interact with me."

"No, because everything was already screwed up before I started time traveling. So screwed up that I can't just go back in time and stop myself from talking to another me. Now I can only go back and save who I can before all of time is completely destroyed."

"Wait. Wouldn't there just be a timeline where time isn't screwed up?"

The red-shirted man stared back at Rick for a few moments, blinking as he tried to work out the kinks in logic within their conversation. He then scowled at Rick, flustered, before yelling

"Shut up! Just don't think about it much and it'll make sense. Listen, all I know is that you're in danger, and we need to leave, so let's go!" He turned around and started to run towards the hole in the wall, but stopped after Rick replied with:

"No.

"What do you mean no? I'm trying to help you over here!"

"No." Rick shook his head, smiling slightly. "No. I must be going crazy. Or I could be still asleep, and this must all be a dream." He smiled at the red-shirted man. "I bet you're just a manifestation of what I wish to be. God, by the way those sunglasses look so dorky. Way too 1980s. And what's with that stupid looking gun?" He chuckled now. "Am I going to see Delilah now? Is this going to be some dumb intervention dream? I bet my parents are hiding behind a tree out there somewhere."

The red-shirted man slapped Rick hard across the face. As he recovered the man hit him again with a backhand slap. The sting causing tears to build up in Rick's eyes.

"Snap out of it. Do you feel that? Good, because this is really happening. You're not going crazy, all of this is real. You're really you, I'm really me, and we're really each other. As much sense as that makes. Trust me, I'm you from the future."

"Okay okay, sorry. It's just hard for me to believe all this is happening." He rubbed the sore spots on his face. "Well can you at least tell me why you had to blow up my wall? Why didn't you just break a window? Or _knock_?"

"No time to explain. Now, as I've been saying, come with me to- OH CHRIST!"

A giant orange crab claw, about twice Rick's size in height and thickness had pushed through the hole in the wall, snapping at them as they both screamed in shock. They both turned around to flee further into the house, but the claw snagged the gun strap across the red-shirted man's shoulders and lifted him into the air. Quickly the man tugged the gun off himself, and he dropped 7 feet down to the ground. His legs buckled and snapped as he hit the floor. The man rolled over to his back, and screamed as the crab claw opened up again, and shot towards him. The red-shirted man was snatched off the ground, blood spurting out from his chest and stomach where the claw had picked him up from.

Rick felt like he was seeing everything in slow motion. The claw crashing through the house, spraying more debris everywhere. The red-shirted man screaming and trying to push himself out of its grip with his hands, screaming as the claw's grip went tighter and tighter. The claw went straight up through the rough, creating a hole that revealed the owner of the claw. An enormous orange crab stared down at the both of them through eyes on of thick antennas. Its shell alone was wider and taller than his house, and it stumbled away on 6 thin spike legs.

The crab shot a grey ball of light into the woods, and in moments an enormous white circle appeared some distance away, within the trees. The circle stood in the sky two-dimensionally, as though someone just drew the image into Rick's vision. The crab then began shuffling toward the white circle, with the red shirted man screaming something that almost sounded like "help".

Below the chaos was Rick, staring slack jawed at the monster that had just destroyed his house further, and that had snatched away his future self with the man's blood landing on Rick's face. In that state, where everything seemed to move so slowly, Rick looked down from the screaming man and the giant crab, and saw the gun lying on the floor, almost perfectly atop the rubble. In that moment he looked at the crab, looked at the gun, and looked at the crab again. He was frozen, unsure of what to do when the red-shirted man's pained voice reached his ears above the destruction.

Rick launched himself at the gun, taking leaping strides as he bounded over the rocks and pieces of fallen roof and wall. He tripped on a stone and landed on his forearms, the sharp parts of the debris making shallow cuts across his skin. He crawled forward, bringing himself to one knee when he finally grabbed hold of the gun.

Immediately he noticed the strangeness of the gun. Essentially it was a grey brick, no sight, no clip, and the only thing to help grab hold of it was a bar stretching the diameter of an empty circle in the non-firing end. It was still easy to figure out, and he pointed the end of it at the orange crab that was now shuffling itself into the woods. Rick grabbed onto the bar within the circle and noticed two buttons, one on his pointer finger and the other above his thumb. He aimed the gun's barrel at the crab, and decided to press the button under his pointer finger.

The giant crab was walking into the woods now, pushing through the first tree down and walking over. With no sight on the gun Rick could only take a guess as to where he was actually aiming at. He squeezed the button down, and what happened next made him yell in a childish delight. The gun made a noise like an airplane engine about to take off, and rumbled so violently that Rick could feel the vibrations across his entire body. When the gun fired, what had come out the other end was a giant beam of light, a dazzling laser of blue and white that Rick recognized as the thing that blasted the wall in his house. The beam sped across the fields, in a perfectly straight line. Even with the sun shining above Rick could still see the glow of light that surrounded the laser. The shot glanced off the claw that held the red-shirted man, and Rick believed that he had at least knocked some of the grip off the claw because the man's screams became more intelligible afterwards.

"OH SO MUCH PAIN! OH GOD" The man yelled.

From the gun's vibrations Rick couldn't control his aim, and the laser drifted to the side of the crab, making a line of disintegrated grass beside it. As he held on to the button, the laser grew thinner until it died down. Rick noticed that the red bar on the gun had depleted, and he concluded that it signified how much laser he just wasted. He didn't know what the other button on the canon did, and didn't want to waste it by trying it out.

Rick's whole body felt sore, but he willed his legs to move and he ran out into the field, chasing after the giant crab. It shuffled its way into the woods, crashing through trees and sending clouds of birds flying out in all directions. On the ground behind the crab's path were pools and globules of blood. Rick wasn't running fast enough. Though he was pushing his legs as hard as he could, he couldn't keep up with the shuffling behemoth.

"Use the jetpack!" The man yelled, an obvious gargle in his voice.

"What?"

"Arrrrrrrgh! The other button besides the laser, it propels the gun backwards! Aaaahahaugh!"

Rick stopped and turned around, aiming the gun at a spot on the ground a few feet from him. He pressed the button above his thumb, and again it rumbled and whirred. Instead of the laser what came out then was a steady stream of air that pushed the gun into his chest. He held on, and it pushed him until his feet came off the ground. The next thing Rick knew he was floating upwards, past the branches of the trees, past the canopy of the woods. He looked over to his house, which was now reduced to nothing more than a rubble dirt and three walls. He soared higher into the air, higher until he was with the birds. They swirled around him in their panicked flight.

Rick had never done anything like this before, and though the circumstances were dire he couldn't help but feel a bit of a thrill from being in the air. Rick turned around and adjusted the gun so that it boosted him forward from behind his armpit. He was flying through the trees, catching up to the giant orange crab and the screaming man. The man's words were much easier to understand from this distance.

"MY INSIDES, AND MY OUTSIDES ARE IN PAIN! I CAN SEE MY BONES, WHY? AAAAUUUGH"

"Why would you make a gun that doubles as a jetpack?"

"uuuaaarruuggh."

As with the laser from earlier, the stream began to die out, the blue bar was depleting, and Rick began to descend. He angled the gun forward so he wouldn't hit the ground so hard. He landed, rolling forward to soften the impact to his legs. Immediately he was on his feet again, aiming at the crab carefully down the barrel of his cannon. This time when he shot the giant laser hit the crab square into the side of its shell. The vibrations caused Rick to lose his aim again, but not before he guided the beam to one of the crab's legs, severing it clean off.

The crab readjusted its legs to maintain its balance, and although its shell was cracked and burned it still kept moving, now already stepping into the white circle. In a few seconds it had moved itself into it completely, and in a flash it vanished. The circle remained however, though it began to shrink in size.

Rick sprinted again, his legs burning from the exertion. The circle continued to shrink, and he yelled from the stiffness he began to feel in his legs. His speed slowed, and soon he collapsed, panting for breath. He was so close, yet he couldn't move any further. He then heard a beep from the canon, and when he looked over at it he saw the bars that had been empty were now refilled. Rick looked again at the shrinking white circle, and he thought he could hear voices coming from within, voices of men and women he thought he recognized and that felt familiar to him. As he stared he thought he could make out familiar faces from within the blankness, Delilah among them. Rick realized what was in front of him. It was a portal to another time.

He hesitated. Why was he even going through this much trouble? The whole explanation of time that the redshirted man gave sounded like bullshit, and he believed that if he stopped now nothing would happen, no giant monsters, no end of the world weirdness. If he stopped now he could just go back to living a normal life, maybe move back in with his parents, who would no doubt help him find another job. If he stopped now he could get his life back together again.

The circle was only a quarter of its original size now, becoming smaller by the second. Rick didn't like being near it. It made his skin crawl, and made the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. As he looked within he saw the redshirted man, who Rick now acknowledged as his future self, desperately trying to wiggle free, blood dripping from his mouth.

"No!" Rick gritted his teeth, took the canon, and aimed it behind him. He wasn't going to just stand around and let someone die. Even if that someone was only himself. E_specially_ if it was himself. He angled the gun in a trajectory that would lift him up while still propelling him the most distance. When he pressed the button his body shot towards the portal, wind whipping his hair and cheeks. Through squinted eyes he saw that the portal was only slightly larger than he was, and he realized the possibility of it closing into him, cutting him in two. He pressed down on the button harder and yelled from behind his teeth, flying ahead as the portal started to discharge lightning from its edges. He passed through the portal just as it closed in behind his legs. The portal then shrunk until it was nothing but a tiny ball of light. After discharging more lightning, it disappeared, ending Rick's current existence.


End file.
